Cultural Implications of Uncertainty in Science:

By 1930 we had developed all the physics (in terms of building consumer electronics/telecommunication systems) and chemistry we would need - the rest becomes engineering.

The cultural impeartive seems to be to find the production economy of scale that delivers technology to the masses.

But such production economies of scale are precisely that which has fueled our enormous consumption.

One of ideas we are trying to get at (as does Burke) is whether or not cultures act "irrationality" and not in their own best interest. Given human history, one can clearly point to a large set of behaviors and outcomes where individual cultures have chosen not to act in a cooperative sense.

Why might this be?

• Is culture hostile to science and its methodology?

• How can science inform culture to better conduct its relation to nature, or can it? If not, why not?

  Is it clear what belief system a particular culture is based on (remember the 4 models).

  For instance, what is our collective belief system? Is it hierarchical? Is it based on man/nature separation?

Science informs us that we are in a necessary partnership with nature.

Why is this not recognized? What would it take for it to become recognized?

More Issues:

• Is the difference because culture demands certainty while science tolerates ambiguity?

• Does culture carry a moral imperative and science does not? (but is it not the moral imperative of science to properly inform culture?)

• Systems of belief are difficult to deal with. Science is one; religion is clearly another. Throughout the Renaissance we shifted from religious institutions dominating culture and law to more progressive means ("the enlightenment) that were more or less based on science, at least as Newton defined it.

• The conundrum is that science has given us tools and machines from which culture rapidly depletes the Earth's resources. Why don't we have a resource management plan that is based on wisdom?
  

  The challenge is finding the right balance between a culture informed by science and acting rationally and one that is built on consumption.

  Is there a balance?